Combined Unit Plan Assessment and Evaluation - 2007

Unit Name: Stars
Author: Erin
Evaluator: Jay

This assessment is a combination of three different forms. The first is meant to provide feedback on the degree that the unit plan has incorporated the main ideas about science teaching stressed in EDC 430 this semester. The second is the URI School of Education Rubric that is used across all the teaching methods courses to make sure that the Rhode Island Beginning Teacher Standards (RIBTs) are being addressed. The third component is a summary of my feedback for each of your unit plan components.

NOTE: All criteria on the SOE Rubric must score a 3 or above in order for you to begin student teaching. You will need to address any score lower than 3 for any criteria before you can student teach. These revisions are listed below. All other feedback, i.e. suggestions for revisions made in the "detailed feedback" section at the very bottom of this page, are optional but should be considered before you enact the unit.- fogleman

Score Summary: Grade: 24.5 / 25

Suggestions for first round of revisions:

• Please add a statement in each lesson's introductory activity that establishes the context of the lesson within the unit, why this lesson is important, and what are the objectives/goals the student should aim for by the end of the day. (To fix Criteria 5) DONE - fogleman Dec 31, 2007
• Please add statements in each conclusion to emphasize the main points of the lesson and how what students learned during the lesson will be used later in the unit. (To fix Criteria 6) DONE - fogleman Dec 31, 2007

Completeness and Organization

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
1. Is the unit plan organized in a way that makes sense?	01/01)
2. Are all the components present? (e.g. Purpose, Concept Map or Outline, 10 Day Lesson Sequence, 3 Long Lessons, Rationale citing how students learn, Assessment strategy.)	12/(12)
3. Is the writing clear, engaging, proofread, formatted, etc.	01/(01)	There are a small number of types on the lessons.

Content

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
4. Are the standards unpacked to indicate subtopics? Student preconceptions?	02/(02)	Nice job describing the main ideas of your unit.
5. Does each lesson include learning performances, i.e. statements about what students will be able to do at the end of the lesson?	02/ (02)
6. Do the plans have students doing something every day? Do students experience phenomena related to the topic?	02/ (02)
7. Do laboratory activities include sufficient time/instruction for students to do/learn about science practices?	.5/ (01)	When possible, lab activities should also strengthen students' science skills.

Assessment

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
8. Do the long lesson plans include questions that allow for formative assessment?	02/ (02)
9. Are students assessed at a variety of cognitive levels?	02/(02)

Overall impression

10. What will students love (or at least enjoy) about this unit? I think students will enjoy the preparing for the presentation and the stargazing.

11. What might be added to make this unit more engaging? Your lectures need to be supported in a way that makes them interactive, i.e more of a question and answer session than a college-type lecture.

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SOE Unit Plan Rubric

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Score 4: Evidence/ Comments:

Unit content focuses on "big ideas" of astronomy cited in the National Science Education Standards.RI GSEs are not cited specifically.

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Score; 5 Score: Evidence/ Comments:

Goals indicate desire to have students demonstrate understanding in a variety of ways at a variety of cognitive levels.

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Score: 5: Evidence/ Comments:

Learning goals have been "unpacked" to indicate student's prerequisite knowledge as well as their probable misconceptions. Unit's activities were designed and sequenced to address these concerns.

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Score: 5. Evidence/ Comments:

Unit's activities begin by having students make star-gazing observations and provides numerous opportunities for them to share their prior knowledge.

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Score: 4: Evidence/Comments:

Prior knowledge is taken into account and each provides students with information about the goal of their work, or how their work relates to the purpose of the unit.

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Score: 4. Evidence/Comments:

Lessons include a sequence of experiences that are summarized and tied to the goals of the unit overall at the conclusion of each day.

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Score: 5. Evidence/Comments:

Students use technology in the form of a variety of laboratory activities and media.

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Score: 4 Evidence/Comments:

Resources that have been included accurately represent their topics and support students' active engagement.

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Score: 5: Evidence/Comments

Students are asked to demonstrate their understanding at a variety of levels, including: describing, explaining, researching, presenting, and analyzing.

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Score: 5 Evidence/Comments:

Students are asked to perform in a variety of assessments, including a presentation and a summative final test.

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Score: 4. Evidence/Comments:

The unit is well written, with just a few typographical errors.

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Detailed Feedback for Lessons 1-4:

Overview/Rationale

• It would be helpful to explain why you chose to include the topics you did, i.e. that they are topics tha are included in both the national standards and the RI GSEs.
• I rearranged your front page to include the text of your purpose and rationale. I did this so that the reader can learn something about your unit in its front page. A relevant picture would also be nice to include on your cover page. If you do not like the way I have arranged this page, then just revert each of the changed pages to restore your original vision.
• Your rationale does a nice job of explaining your design choices.
• If your unit addresses specific inquiry skills beyond careful observation, you should also mention this here.

Learning Goals

• Nice job unpacking your learning goals.
• You should cite whether your standards are national are state or both.
• I agree with your assessment that you students will already need to know about topics such as gravity and brightness. Will these topics already have been covered in your class? If so, then you should point out in your rationale that students will have to recall and apply these ideas in this unit.

Concept Map

• Concept map aligns nicely with your lesson descriptions in your lesson sequence.

Lesson Sequence

L01

• Overview - Fine
• Objectives - Fine
• D01 Intro
  • You might think about assigning this homework a week in advance so that they can make observations on a clear night.
  • When they are volunteering their answers, you might require their answers to be unique, i.e. not duplicates.
  • Don't you think that you should say something that introduces the questions the unit as a whole will address.
  • Good intro - students will be engaged because you asked them what they saw.
  • In your LP you say that students should have recorded 10 observations, but on the handout, you ask them to record all their observations, which is it? (I would say ask them to make "10 awesome observations" to signal that you aren't looking for the most obvious statements that could be make w/o actually observing.)
• D01 Activities
  • You've clearly thought through what you're going to say in you minilecture. What would you like students to take way? How will you support them taking the main points away in writing? I don't think you can depend on them to successfully record your main points in their notes without explicit guidance or supports. This applies to all your lectures, so I won't repeat it.
• D01 Conclusion
  • When you conclude each day, you should review what you want students to remember as the main point of the lesson as well as what the main activity was. You should also connect this lesson with what will be happening in the unit.
  • Why not ask the class for the most important/surprising thing that they learned today?
• D01 Assessment
  • What will you do to let students know that taking notes in your lecture is not optional? How can you assess their notetaking skills from this day's activities?
• D02 Intro
  • You should also explain why scientist think brightness is no important. If you leave it they way you have it hear, it sounds like determining brightness of stars is just busy work.
• D02 Activities
  • Could you supplement this demo with an activity that helped students understand that the brightness falls of with the square of distance? This might be a wikispace page or a worksheet that you could point student to for extra credit.
  • You should always include a title on your worksheets so that you refer to them in class and students can organize them in their notebooks.
  • You should also include instructions on your worksheet so that a student who is not sure of what to do can read instructions before asking you.
• D02 Conclusion
  • Again, in your conclusion, you should review main ideas and explain how they fit into the unit. Right now, I would be asking how we know the relative separations between the stars, and you're going to explain this next, right? You've introduce a "need to know," so you should play it up by asking, What question do you have right now based on our idea of "absolute brightness?" and let THEM come up with the question about how scientist measure distances between us and the stars.

L02 Days 3 & 4

• Overview
• Objectives
  • I notice that students will not actually calculate a distance using parallax... would this be possible?
• D01 Intro
  • Be sure to make clear to students what they are going to be doing and why and how parallax relates to the goals of the unit as a whole.
• D01 Activities
  • Your description of this lesson is less detailed, and you should plan on making it more explicit before you actually enact it. Specifically, what questions will you ask them to point out the similarities and differences between what they did in the classroom and and what astronomers do when they measure distances via parallax?
• D01 Conclusion
  • Again, you need to remind students of what they did and why.
  • While it is okay to write a lesson that spans two days, you should include your opening and closing strategies for each day as you did in your previous lesson plan. It looks like your Day 4 and Day 5 LPs are the same, so I'll assume that you've pushed the color/temp lesson back one day. You should probably revise the lesson titled "Day 4."
• D01 Assessment
• D02 Intro
• D02 Activities
• D02 Conclusion
• D02 Assessment

L03 - Colors of Stars

• Overview - Missing
• Objectives
  • Should your objective on temperature clear that you are talk about steller temperatures?
• Intro
  • Since these sheets need to be printed in color, you may want to print off 10 and have them laminated in the media center so that you can reuse them for small groups throughout the day. Each image should probably be numbered for quick reference.
  • Why would you show the "correct" order during the intro??!! Instead, emphasize their "need to know" by telling them that their judgment of stellar temperature is not quite right, and the goal for today is to learn how scientists determine the temperature of stars from their color.
• Activities
  • Where are your lecture notes? You might consider including a demonstration that is another descrepant event like this one I found:

At Home Experiment: The Hottest Part of a Flame. Retrieved December 23, 2007, from http://www.edgerton.org/resources/kidscorner/kidscorner/hottestpartofaflame.html

which acknowledges that even though the blue part of a flame is hottest, combustion more readily spreads from the yellow portion of the flame. (Pretty cool, huh?)

• Conclusion
  • Why is there an activity in your conclusion? Why not move this up into the activities section and use your conclusion for....I don't know... reviewing the main take-away of the day (and their answers on the opening activity) and how they will use this knowledge in the upcoming days of the unit?
  • Could you adapt your spectrum activities so that student would use the hyperphysics website to try an classify a set of (color) star images? Is that what your worksheet will have them do? If so, you need to describe how you will arrange/manage this activity.
• Assessment
  • Your goal to assess students' understanding is a lofty one, but I'm not sure how you're going to do it in this lesson. I would know more if you has included the worksheet.